


Restitution

by longleggedgit



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-10 00:21:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longleggedgit/pseuds/longleggedgit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaeta has a lot to atone for after New Caprica.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Restitution

**Author's Note:**

> Another piece I wrote a couple years ago and just found on the hard drive. Back in the day, I even got this betaed by the very helpful [](http://incapricious.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://incapricious.livejournal.com/)**incapricious** before abandoning it again. I think I hated it or something, but now I think I like it. Set right after the New Caprica arc, so kind of mid-series; something about Gaeta's situation around then really got me hurtin. The only reason this is a fic about Gaeta and an original male character instead of being about Starbuck and an original female character is because the latter would have inevitably turned into a Mary Sue. :(

After he's almost blown out the airlock by his former friends and colleagues, Gaeta mostly keeps to himself. In the mornings he reports for duty on time and does his job, and when his shift is over he returns to his bunk and tries not to bump into too many familiar faces on the way there. Roslin may have issued a fleet-wide pardon, but that doesn't mean everyone's forgiven and forgotten the part Gaeta played in Baltar's administration. From what he can tell, it doesn't mean even half of everyone has. He doesn't strive for their forgiveness because he doesn't want it. Most days, he's pretty sure he doesn't deserve it.  
   
Gaeta's not into self-loathing like Baltar and he's not into self-pity either, but it's hard. He likes being around people, always has, and he likes having friends. As far as he can tell, that's just called being frakking human. So by the time they're two weeks away from New Caprica, the stress of trying to perform his job at 110%—better than he used to be before Baltar was president, better than anyone they could possibly scrounge up to replace him—on top of discovering a new, bitter understanding of what it means to be lonely, is starting to get to him. He's sick of having no one but the Chief to eat lunch with every day—the Chief, who only stares at his food and refuses to speak anyway—and he's sick of starting to drink at five-thirty just so he can pass out sometime between eight and nine.  
   
Which is why, when a civilian he's never seen before stops him in the corridor one evening just after Gaeta's shift ends and asks him where he's headed, he doesn't know what to do other than answer honestly.  
   
"Just—back to my bunk," Gaeta says, trying not to appear as stunned as he is.  
   
"I see you heading this way every day at the exact same time," says the civilian, who is young and fit and not unattractive when Gaeta stops to look at him right. "You always headed to your bunk?"  
   
A pair of pilots pass them on the left side and slow down when they see Gaeta, just long enough for one of them to spit at his feet. His new civilian acquaintance shoots them a glare.  
   
"Look," Gaeta says. "Probably you were just preoccupied on New Caprica with trying to stay alive or something and don't recognize me, but I'm definitely not the guy you want to be scoping out on this ship."  
   
The civilian snorts. "Gaeta, right? I know who you are."  
   
Unexpected, but not so much that Gaeta's actually thrown. He's had people pretend to be friendly before. Starbuck comes to mind.  
   
"Then we have nothing to discuss." Gaeta's intention is to leave before getting hit, but the civilian blocks his path. Instead of raising a fist, though, he offers his hand.  
   
"Graham," he says.  
   
And even though he knows it's dangerous and stupid, Gaeta thinks about his empty bunk and falling asleep for another eight hours straight and can't swallow it down. He takes Graham's hand.  
   
"You already know me," he says, a little awkwardly.  
   
Graham laughs. "Yeah. But only by reputation."  
   
They end up sharing a bottle of moonshine in Gaeta's abandoned quarters while he spills it all, everything, from enlisting in the military to his initial admiration of Baltar to the day he almost shot him in his own office.  
   
"It's a pity you didn't go through with it," Graham mutters, looking darker than Gaeta thought possible, but when Graham notices Gaeta's troubled expression he immediately leans back and shakes the darkness away from his face. "I'm not saying," he begins. "You know. You did frakking everything right, okay? What else could you have done? The gods only know what happened to him after that. Hopefully he's rotting in a ditch back on New Caprica."  
   
The subject is making Gaeta uncomfortable, so he changes it. "It's funny," he says, "how badly we wanted to get our feet on the ground at first. It's barely a year later and we're all so damned happy to be back in the air."  
   
"New Caprica was never right for us," Graham says. "We'll find Earth."  
   
It's the first time Gaeta's believed someone when they said it. He puts the bottle down and turns to look Graham dead in the eye, hoping to find something he doesn't have a name for, but Graham kisses him before he can even really begin to search. Everything logical in Gaeta is warning him _Stop, bad decision, too reckless,_ but all he understands right now is the way that dull ache in his chest is dissipating with every second their lips are connected, the way something tight knots itself up in the back of his throat and refuses to let go.  
   
"You really," Gaeta gasps, breaking apart as Graham fumbles with the hem of his shirt, "really, really—you don't want to do this."  
   
"The frak I don't," Graham says. He kicks a chair under the handle of the door and that puts an end to all further arguments.  
   
They frak on the floor because the bunks are too narrow and close and it seems like the next best thing, and then someone pounds on the door and they pry themselves apart only to find the intruder gone by the time they've tugged some clothes on and dragged the chair away. Graham puts it back and they frak again, this time against the wall, Gaeta too delirious with the sensation of being touched this intimately, of being wanted for the first time in the gods only know how long, to worry about this man who is still a complete stranger to him, who let Gaeta prattle on and on but shared nothing about himself, whose only distinguishing feature in Gaeta's mind turns out to be a series of burn scars on his side and chest.  
   
"What're they from?" Gaeta asks when they're really finished, too exhausted to go on, tracing his hand down a place along Graham's ribs where the scarification gets particularly nasty.  
   
Graham's taken one of Gaeta's cigarettes and he coughs with the first exhale, staring at the far wall through his haze of smoke.  
   
"A fire," he says, and that's all Gaeta gets before Graham kisses him on the forehead, gets up to find his clothes and leaves Gaeta once again with nothing but his liquor and his thoughts.  
   
They meet nine or ten more times, always in Gaeta's quarters or at some semi-public semi-private place, never at a site within Graham's sphere of existence. Every time they talk, or Gaeta talks and Graham listens, and every time they frak, usually at least twice, sometimes until Gaeta's so bone-tired he barely notices when Graham leaves.  
   
It's pathetic, but on the day Graham finally asks Gaeta if he'd like to come see where he sleeps, Gaeta nearly cries with relief. Graham isn't embarrassed of him after all, this isn't just a pity or desperation or glory or vengeance frak, and Gaeta is ready to fully admit to himself just how much of his happiness has been riding on their short, brilliant liaison, the first thing he's had to hold on to maybe since Caprica got bombed. Maybe ever. It's too good to be true, and Gaeta's never thought that about _anything_ before, but he likes it.  
   
He shouldn't be surprised, then, when Graham leads them into a largely abandoned storage room with nothing in it other than a few crates and a few very large men who have been waiting for their perfect opportunity to beat the hell out of Felix Gaeta. They don't waste any time, forcing him down to the steel flooring with a few well-placed kicks, Graham standing back to watch. Gaeta lets them take turns sitting on his chest and punching him in the face without putting up much of a fight, but after the first round he closes his eyes, unable to bear seeing Graham's face anymore.  
   
"You want to know how I got these burns?" Graham asks, stepping forward to land his first kick to Gaeta's ribs, which he's already fairly sure are broken. "I got them trying to pull my sister out of a fire the Cylons set in our ghetto to weaken the rebellion. I got them from letting my clothes burn while I watched her die."  
   
He spits so it lands on Gaeta's cheek then and then drops to his knees and grabs a handful of Gaeta's hair, ready to pound his head into the floor, maybe, ready to put an end to this at last.  
   
"I frakked you because I wanted you to know exactly what it felt like to have your trust completely betrayed and your ground pulled out from under you," Graham says, his mouth suddenly inches from Gaeta's. "I wanted you to know what it felt like to be us."  
   
"What the frak is going on here?"  
   
It's Starbuck's voice, which comes as neither a relief nor a shock to Gaeta. She sends Graham and his friends packing with a few choice words about what she'll do to them if she ever catches them pulling a stunt like this again, and somewhere in that time Gaeta manages to sit up, leaning back against the wall and wrapping one arm around his side where it hurts the most. Really, though, that's not where it hurts the most at all.  
   
"Shit," Starbuck says once they're gone, tossing Gaeta a disgusted look. "Watch where you walk, Gaeta. Next time I'll let them finish."  
   
She's gone then, too, which is just as well, as Gaeta doesn't really want an audience when he drags himself to his feet and realizes somewhere in the course of events he lost control of his bladder. And he knows she's right, of course, about watching where he walks, but that doesn't mean he plans on taking her advice. There will be a next time, and Gaeta will let it happen. There will be a next time, and when it comes Gaeta hopes Starbuck doesn't interrupt.

_end_


End file.
